Narrowing the gender gap in youth entrepreneurship in Russia: the role of university education and environment

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. 2026. Vol. 45. No. 1. P. 43–63.

Uskova Anna, Iangiboeva Nilufar, Shirokova G., Bodolica V.

Purpose – Although entrepreneurship represents one of the main driving forces of socio-economic development of any nation, women continue to be underrepresented in this domain. The aim of this paper isto examine the role that relevant university education and environment play in narrowing the gender gap in youth entrepreneurship. Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on the GUESSS 2021 dataset, the final sample includes 4,813 student-respondents from 21 higher education institutions located in Russia. Our hypotheses were tested using Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) regression analyses with the help of Stata 14.2 software. Findings – Our resultsindicate that in Russia there is a substantial imbalance between male and female students regarding their level of involvement in entrepreneurial activities. University entrepreneurship education reduces this gap by boosting young women’s engagement into entrepreneurship, while the effect of university environment is not significant. Originality/value – This research draws on both the social roles’ theory and the university embeddedness perspective to provide a contextualized evidence on factors that may reduce the entrepreneurial gender gap of youth in an emerging market setting.

Keywords: Russia, youth entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurial gender gap, Entrepreneurial university environment